Chapter 10: What Remained
The criminal referral moved faster than anyone expected.
Renata called Charlotte on a Thursday morning, ten days after the lobby.
"They executed the warrant," Renata said.
"Dominic's offices, his home, and the shell firm's registered address.
They took the servers."
"Warren Cole?"
"Cooperating.
He retained separate counsel yesterday.
His attorney reached out to us this morning."
"And Marcus Webb?"
"The Law Society opened a formal investigation.
He's been suspended pending the outcome." A pause.
"Charlotte — it's done.
The legal structure is clean.
The board has been reconstituted.
The forged document has been formally voided by the court."
Charlotte was standing in her mother's old office on the top floor.
She had not redecorated it.
She had not moved anything.
She had simply sat down at the desk and started working.
"Thank you, Renata," she said.
"Don't thank me yet.
There's still the civil case."
"I know.
But thank you."
She ended the call and set the phone on the desk.
The office smelled faintly of her mother's perfume — or maybe that was memory, not reality.
Charlotte had stopped being able to tell the difference.
She opened the top drawer of the desk.
Inside, still in the position her mother had left it, was a single envelope.
Charlotte's name on the front, in her mother's handwriting.
She had found it the first day she sat down here.
She had not opened it yet.
She picked it up now.
The letter inside was two pages, handwritten.
Her mother's voice came through every line — direct, warm, occasionally funny in the dry way she had always been funny.
She had written it six months before she passed.
She had written it knowing exactly what was coming.
The last paragraph read:
*I know this will be hard.
I know you will be frightened and angry and there will be moments when you wonder if any of it was worth the fight.
I want you to know that it was.
You are.
The Solmere name belongs to you not because I put it in a document, but because you are the kind of person who will carry it the right way.
I have always known that.
I should have told you more often.
I'm telling you now.*
Charlotte set the letter on the desk.
She did not wipe her eyes immediately.
She let herself sit with it for a moment — the grief, the relief, the strange fullness of a thing finally resolved.
Patricia Ellison knocked on the open door.
"The afternoon briefing is ready when you are," she said.
Then, more quietly: "Are you all right?"
"Yes," Charlotte said.
"Give me five minutes."
Patricia nodded and left without another word.
Charlotte folded the letter carefully and put it back in the envelope.
She placed it in the drawer.
She closed the drawer.
She looked out the window at the city her mother had spent a lifetime building something in.
Then she stood up, straightened her jacket, and walked to the door.
The Solmere Hotel had a full day ahead of it.
So did she.
---
*Some things are taken from us quietly, piece by piece, by people who count on us being too grief-stricken to notice.
Charlotte noticed.
Have you ever had to fight to reclaim something — or someone — that was rightfully yours?
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